Archive
Essay: Wants and Needs in the Drive for the 2013 NBA Title
“Things belong to people who want them most.” – Dashiell Hammet, An Unfinished Woman
Oftentimes we–the few who attempt to extrapolate nuances of meaning from what is, at its root, a game–spend oodles of time trying to figure out what teams do which things right, and use that somewhat esoteric bit of quantitative information to show how it’s the driving force behind one team’s success and another team’s failure. But increasingly in this day and age of shot charts and synergy cameras, we forget to step back and look at the big picture: namely, who has the drive or the will to want it more, or perhaps more aptly: who needs to win the 2013 NBA title the most? Read more…
Essay: The Buss Family And Atlas Shrugged
I’m not a fan of Ayn Rand’s objectivist novels. They’re a black and white expositions—claiming verisimilitude—in a world that’s marred in grey. So I wouldn’t encourage any thinking person to read her dogmatic fiction as a schema for life. But the siblings in Rand’s opus, Atlas Shrugged, parallel the Lakers organization, and the offspring of their genial owner, Jerry Buss.
Patriarch, Gerald Hatten “Jerry” Buss sired four children with his first wife, JoAnn Mueller; two of whom, Jim and Jeanie, play an integral role in the team’s current day-to-day affairs. Jim has taken over for his increasingly infirmed father as the Lakers’ President of Team Operations. Jeanie is the Executive Vice President of Business Operations for the Lakers, and a star in her own right. So how does the progeny of Jerry coincide with Rand’s novel?
Essay: Second Annual Shaky Ankles NBA Preview!
Predicting the results for an upcoming NBA season, and then blogging about them, can be both pointless and embarrassing. Despite it also being super fun, I’m switching up the normal “Shaky Ankles NBA Preview” style by leaning less on fortune telling and more towards things I’m expecting to excite/intrigue/depress me throughout the next eight months of watching basketball.
Over the past couple weeks I’ve subliminally let my thoughts on MVP and Rookie of the Year known, and since the other major awards that matter are boring and predictable (Defensive Player of the Year: Dwight Howard/Sixth Man of the Year: James Harden/Most Improved Player: Darko Milicic) I’ve decided to go a different route. Read more…
